Rock'n Roll

Screenshots

Time to clean up your mouse again, because a small speck of dust is lethal in Rock'n Roll. Without any try at a backstory or an explanation about the situation, you have to control a little ball trapped in a maze. Your only goal is to escape and by that reach the next level where everything starts again.

Between you and the exit, there are quite a few obstacles. Doors can only be opened if you've collected the correctly colour-coded keys, explosions and acid should be avoided completely, because they gnaw at your energy, slippery ice makes controlling your ball harder, arrows not only mark one-way routes, but even push you into the direction they're pointing to and so on.

On the upside, you sometimes stumble upon places where you can buy supplies like repair kits for cracks in the floor, parachutes which can save you from falling or bombs to blast away walls. Money can be found lying around on the floor as well, luring you into possibly dangerous parts of the maze...

Educated readers should have already noticed this game is a variant of the Marble Madness idea which Atari successfully brought into the arcades in the mid-80s - and a very good one. Presented with appropriate graphics, Rock'n Roll especially shines when it comes to its exact controls (a must for this type of game, or would you like to fall into the abyss because of sluggish reaction to your input?), its fine simulation of real-world physics (inertia rising with velocity, bumping back from walls) and the challenging difficulty.

What remains a mystery is the name of the game. Sure, it's supposed to be a wordplay with 'roll' (balls roll...), but apart from that? The green monster 'band' appearing in the credits hardly counts. The spelling is a little strange, too. There's no question: the toughest puzzle in this excellent game is finding out the meaning of Rock'n Roll...